How to use the LTH search function

The search function lets you do the following things
a. Search for a particular word (e.g. Ixcapuzalco)
b. Search for a word and its variants (e.g. chees* gets you cheese, cheeses, and cheesesteak).
c. Search for posts that contain all of group of words (pizza AND thin AND crust)
d. Search for posts that contain one term but not a second (Italian NOT beef*).
e. Search for posts by a specific author (although you'll do that more easily if you start at the "memberlist" page).

FAQ
1. How do I find posts about a particular restaurant?

a. Good: Type the name of the restaurant. Choose the "Eating out in Chicagoland" forum. Hit enter.

Example: Let's say you're trying to find posts about The Berghoff (which I happen to like more than a lot of other posters and this is my chance to say so). The obvious thing to do is to type "Berghoff" into the search box and hit enter. As of today, that will get you four posts mentioning the Berghoff. That may be all you need but it's not all that's available.

b. Better. Type the name of the restaurant with an * at the end, e.g. Berghoff*. Choose the Eating out in Chicagoland Forum. Hit enter.

Lo and behold another post comes up. Why didn't this perfectly fine post show up on the first search? Because the author referred to the restaurant as Berghoff's, something people commonly do with restaurants. Using the * gets you all posts in which the word Berghoff plus anything else is used. If you also want to account for poor spellers, you can shorten the name a little, e.g. Bergh*. (Just don't shorten it too much. Berg* gets you information about Bergen New Jersey and bergamot scented teas.)

2. What if the restaurant has more than one word in its name, e.g Gene and Jude's?

a. Good: Use your * with whatever you think is the least common word in the name. (Warning, this is a good example of why you need to use the wildcard: Just typing "Jude" won't get you to the post titled "The Greatest Hotdog Stand in the World"). In this case, if you try "Gene*" you'll quickly discover that the word "generally" includes the word "gene" and you'll have lots and lots of posts that aren't what you want. So try Jude*. This will get you posts about dining with a friend named Jude, but will also get you the Gene and Jude posts.

b. Better. Use the "AND" function. Gene* AND Jude*. Perfect!

3. What if I want restaurants in a particular neighborhood?

You can try to search by the name of the neighborhood (e.g. Bridgeport, Albany AND Park). You can also try a particular street name (e.g. Devon, Damen). You can look at the lovely Chicago chow map at http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=388.
Or you can just post an inquiry and see what responses you get.

4. How do I search for posts about the "Little" Three Happiness Restaurant? The secret for finding posts about the restaurant, as opposed to a million general posts about this forum named for the restaurant, is to limit your search (as you should every time you're searching for a specific restaurant) to the Eating out in Chicagoland forum. Then Search for "Little AND Three AND Happiness".

5. Why do I keep getting a message saying "Warning: Page has Expired" every time I try to go back to my list of search results?

Apparently this is a Microsoft Explorer "security precaution". To get back to your results page hit the refresh key on your Internet Explorer task bar (it looks like a piece of paper with some scribbles on it) and then hit "retry" when the next message comes up. It's a pain, but it works.

6. How do I search for the best Chicago pizza?

Not easily. What fun would it be if there was just one place everyone agreed had the best pizza in town?. Here your best bet is to do some slogging. Go ahead and just type pizza into the search box, choose the Eating Out in Chicagoland forum, and hit enter. Look down the list of topics for a lively one (how about "Shattered Faith in Chicago Pizza") and dig in.

7. Okay, I get it, but I'm new to Chicago and this group and I would really like to know what some of the best places are that people have discovered. I promise that I'll go discover some more good places on my own, but in the meantime, can't you please tell me what some of the favorites are?

All right. If you insist. And if you promise not to think that some group of food gods has decided that these are the "best" restaurants in Chicago, even of their types. But yes, there is a series of posts called "The Essentials" about some of the most noteworthy off-the-beaten-track favorites. Search for "essentials" in the Eating Out in Chicagoland forum. You'll enjoy the posts--and probably the restaurants as well.

That's really excellent, thank you for doing that and a far better job of it than the few meager tips I was contemplating.

I would add only the following:

Right on the search page there's a choice between the default way to search ("Search for any terms or use query as entered") and another way, which is "Search for all terms." The distinction is, "hot dog" under the first will get you any use of either term (i.e, "The so-called shrimp diavolo wasn't hot at all" or "it's across from Bad Dog Tavern"), where the second will require both terms before it returns a result. (As Ann notes, you can also force the default to search that way by typing in "hot AND dog.") Generally speaking, the first one will give you lots of results, many far afield, while the second will give you a few dead-on results, but possibly miss things that you still might want to see. Judge for yourself how you want to search, but I find it usually more useful to try "Search for all terms" first and see if what I want is in that shorter, but possibly too exclusive, list.

How do I search for a phrase? This becomes important especially if two or more terms are very common words. For example, "Spring World".
The number of posted articles approaches 30,000 and it would be nice if possible to focus and narrow searches - especially when trying to find (and link) to posts that predate ones joining/posting here. This (may) also reduce the multiplicity of queries on the same subject. Thanks!

How do I search for a phrase? This becomes important especially if two or more terms are very common words. For example, "Spring World".The number of posted articles approaches 30,000 and it would be nice if possible to focus and narrow searches - especially when trying to find (and link) to posts that predate ones joining/posting here. This (may) also reduce the multiplicity of queries on the same subject. Thanks!

See b)

2. What if the restaurant has more than one word in its name, e.g Gene and Jude?s?

a. Good: Use your * with whatever you think is the least common word in the name. (Warning, this is a good example of why you need to use the wildcard: Just typing ?Jude? won?t get you to the post titled ?The Greatest Hotdog Stand in the World?). In this case, if you try ?Gene*? you?ll quickly discover that the word ?generally? includes the word ?gene? and you?ll have lots and lots of posts that aren?t what you want. So try Jude*. This will get you posts about dining with a friend named Jude, but will also get you the Gene and Jude posts.

Maybe I'm losing it, but I can't do an effective search for "old town", despite following all these suggestions. I've searched for "old and town", for "old town" after clicking the box to do an "and" search, everything. Any ideas what I could be doing wrong? Lots of entries wiht either "old" or "town," most of them nowhere near Old Town...

jtg wrote:Maybe I'm losing it, but I can't do an effective search for "old town", despite following all these suggestions. I've searched for "old and town", for "old town" after clicking the box to do an "and" search, everything. Any ideas what I could be doing wrong? Lots of entries wiht either "old" or "town," most of them nowhere near Old Town...

jtg,

Unfortunately, phpbb does a poor job of supporting phrase searching.

Please note the post just before yours which links to a discussion about phrase searching. In this thread, the google method will be outlined. This method is by far the most effective.

I was talking to a couple people recently who were not aware of the Google trick that allows you to do a proper phrase search on LTHForum.com, so I thought I'd bubble this up to people's conciousness again.

There's an extension to this trick that makes it even easier to use after a little setup, if you use Firefox as your web browser (which you should be):

Firefox allows you to assign keywords to your bookmarks, so all you have to do is type the keyword in your address bar to load that particular site. Futhermore, Firefox allows you to dynamically add terms to the bookmark's URL, which is useful for executing particular searches. So, you can bookmark the Google search results page with "site:lthforum.com" and allow yourself to dynamically add the search term, so you never have to type "site:lthforum.com" again.

If you're still with me, follow these instructions in Firefox:

1) In the bookmarks manager, select "Add a new bookmark..."
2) Enter the following values:
Name:
LTHForum SearchLocation:
http://www.google.com/search?hs=l0V&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2coff=1&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=%s+site%3Althforum.com&btnG=SearchKeyword:
slth3) As an explanation of the above: "Name" is irrelevant. The "Location" has been edited directly to allow for the dynamic inclusion of search terms and should be entered exactly as printed above, in one long string. The "keyword" can also be whatever you want, but you'll need to remember it. I chose "slth" as shorthand for "search lthforum".
4) Click "OK" to save this bookmark.
5) In the Firefox address bar type: slth "italian beef" and you'll execute a search of LTHForum in Google, for that exact phrase.

I used the LThforum search using keyword: popcorn, then limited the search to Cooking and Shopping. I got 59 threads, which I was easily able to pick out this topic.

This is an occasion where the LTh search was better than google. The ability to single out results from Cooking and Shopping only helped a lot. Your keyword of 'topping' is rarely used around here thus excluded the thread you were seeking. If you do use keyword search 'popcorn topping' for Cooking and Shopping, then you get Gary's chili oil thread.

You're doing nothing wrong. It's just that the word "topping" doesn't appear in the thread. Sometimes, when you know what you're looking for you have to get creative with the word combinations (like Santander suggested with the street names).

First, I removed "topping" and saw that "popcorn" gave me over 400 hits. Too many. So, I added "butter" assuming that someone mentioned butter at some point in that thread: 17 hits. Much more manageable. (Although, the thread was the third one down in the first search of just "popcorn". It seems logical that "topping" would be there, but it wasn't.

For those of you using Mozilla Firefox, there's an add-on called Hyperwords. This has many cool functions, but most relevant to this site is that it lets you highlight a word or phrase on a web page and perform a one-click Google search for it within whatever site you happen to be looking at.

Another easy way to do Google searches on this site is to bookmark the recipe index page and use the search box there.